Bidspirit auction | Signature of the Gaon Rabbi

Signature of the Gaon Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl as a young bochur, Tyrnau 1920 - Sefer “ya’arot devash” from rabbi Jonathan eybeschutz, second edition, rare edition, printed in Prague 1793-94. Lacking title page, otherwise in good condition, old damaged binding. Signed on the inner binding ” Hashem gave me this Hakatan Michael Dov Weissmandl in the year 1920 Tyrnau” Another signature underneath. As the Rabbi was born in 1904 this was signed by him when he was a young Bochur of around 16. Hagaon Harav Michael Dov Weissmandl (1904-1958) dedicated heart and soul to rescue Jews from extermination by the Nazi persecutors. Rabbi Michael Ber was born in Debrecen, Hungary to Yosef Weissmandl, a shochet. A few years later his family moved to Tyrnau (now Trnava, Slovakia). In 1931 he moved to Nitra to study under Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Ungar, whose daughter, Bracha Rachel, he married in 1937. He was thus an oberlander (from the central highlands of Europe), a non-Hasidic Jew. In October 1944, Harav Weissmandl and his family were captured and placed on a train headed to Auschwitz, however he survived by escaping through a hole that he sawed in the train. Throughout the next months, he dispatched heartrending letters abroad describing the atrocities and mass murders taking place across Europe. Harav Weissmandl endeavored to obtain funds to bribe the Germans into halting the deportations, although most of his appeals were tragically ignored. Harav Weissmandl blamed Zionist institutions for ignoring his pleas, and throughout the rest of his life, fervently opposed Zionism and the founding of the State of Israel. His chilling descriptions of the Holocaust appear in his books Min Hameitzar and Karasi v’Ein Oneh.